Anthony Newley Biography | OLDIES.com Anthony Newley Biography Overview Biography Songs Similar Artists DVDs Blu-ray VHS CDs Vinyl George Anthony Newley, 24 September 1931, London, England, d. 14 April 1999, Jensen Beach, Florida, USA. One of the UKs most highly successful songwriters, actors and singers of the 60s. Born in Hackney, east London, Newley was evacuated to Hertfordshire during World War II. He attended the Italia Conti Stage School in London before working as a child actor in several films, including The Little Ballerina, Vice Versa, and David Leans acclaimed version of Oliver Twist (1948) in which he played the Artful Dodger. A brief spell of national service ended after six weeks on psychiatric grounds. He made his London theatrical debut in John Crankos revue, Cranks in 1955, and had character parts in well over 20 films before he was cast as rock n roll star Jeep Jackson in 1959s Idle On Parade.

Newleys four-track vocal EP, and his version of the films hit ballad, Jerry Lordans Ive Waited So Long, started a three-year UK chart run that included Personality, If She Should Come To You, And The Heavens Cried, the novelty numbers Pop Goes The Weasel and Strawberry Fair and two UK number 1 hits, Why and Lionel Barts Do You Mind?. Newley also made the album charts in 1960 with his set of standards, Love Is A Now And Then Thing. He made further appearances in the charts with Tony (1961), and the comedy album Fool Britannia (1963), on which he was joined by his wife, Joan Collins, and Peter Sellers. In 1961 Newley collaborated with Leslie Bricusse on the book, music and lyrics for the offbeat stage musical, Stop The World - I Want To Get Off. Newley also directed, and played the central role of Littlechap.

The show, which stayed in the West End for 16 months, ran for over 500 performances on Broadway, and was filmed in 1966. It produced several hit songs, including What Kind Of Fool Am I?, Once In A Lifetime and Gonna Build A Mountain. In 1964 Bricusse and Newley wrote the lyric to John Barrys music for Shirley Bassey to sing over the titles of the James Bond movie, Goldfinger. The teams next musical show in 1965, The Roar Of The Greasepaint - The Smell Of The Crowd, with comedian Norman Wisdom in the lead, toured the north of England but did not make the West End. When it went to Broadway Newley took over (co-starring with Cyril Ritchard), but was not able to match the success of Stop The World, despite an impressive score that contained such numbers as Who Can I Turn To?, A Wonderful Day Like Today, The Joker, Look At That Face and This Dream.

In 1967 Newley appeared with Rex Harrison and Richard Attenborough in the film musical Doctor Dolittle, with script and songs by Bricusse. Despite winning an Oscar for Talk To The Animals, the film was considered an expensive flop, as was Newleys own movie project in 1969, a pseudo-autobiographical sex-fantasy entitled Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe And Find True Happiness? Far more successful, in 1971, was Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, a Roald Dahl story with music and lyrics by Bricusse and Newley. Sammy Davis Jnr. had a million-selling record with one of the songs, The Candy Man. Bricusse and Newley also wrote several numbers for the 1971 NBC television musical adaptation of Peter Pan, starring Mia Farrow and Danny Kaye. The Good Old Bad Old Days! opened in London in 1972 and had a decent run of 309 performances. Newley sang some of the songs, including The People Tree, on his 1972 album, Aint It Funny.

In 1989, a London revival of Stop The World - I Want To Get Off, directed by Newley, and in which he also appeared, closed after five weeks. In the same year, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, along with Bricusse. In 1991, Newley appeared on UK television with his ex-wife, Joan Collins, in Noël Cowards Tonight At 8.30, with its famous Red Peppers segment. In the following year, having lived in California for some years, Newley announced that he was returning to the UK, and bought a house there to share with his 90-year-old mother. In the early 90s he presentedOnce Upon A Song, an anthology of his own material, at the Kings Head Theatre in London, and occasionally played the title role in regional productions of the musical Scrooge, which Bricusse had adapted for the stage from his 1970 film.

During the remainder of the 90s Newley continued to perform his accomplished cabaret act (in which he amusingly bemoaned the fact that he had not had a hit with one of his own songs) at venues such as the Rainbow & Stars in New York and Londons Café Royal. In 1998 he worked in a rather less sophisticated environment when playing crooked car dealer Vince Watson in one of the UKs top-rated television soap operas, EastEnders. Tara Newley, the daughter of Newley and Joan Collins, has worked as a radio and television presenter, and in 1994 released her first record entitled Save Me From Myself. Newley lost his battle with cancer and died in April 1999. Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze. Filter Results Anthony Newley | New Music And Songs | Anthony Newley About Anthony Newley Anthony Newley was one of entertainment's genuine triple threats: an actor, singer, and composer with an international following, equally adept and prodigious in all three fields. Moreover, he enjoyed success as a performer in such seemingly mutually exclusive fields as rock & roll and the legitimate stage.

And even more improbably, he did it with a working-class Cockney persona that should never have found much currency outside of England. Indeed, for 30 years he was one of the most imposing talents to come out of England this side of the Beatles. He was born Anthony George Newley on September 24, 1931, the son of George Anthony and Frances Grace Newley, in Hackney, a working-class section of London. Neither of his parents was involved in performing or music, and it was only a sequence of events growing out of World War II that led him toward either of those fields. Newley's education was interrupted by the German blitz, and he was evacuated to a foster home in the countryside. Along with some friends, he eventually found his way to Brighton and the home of George Pescud, a retired music hall performer who introduced Newley to performing, singing with him in the local choir and performing skits. Pescud opened up Newley and his friends to a range of arts, including music, writing, and painting, that he might otherwise never have appreciated or understood.

Newley, who was not yet 14 at the conclusion of the war, decided to remain on his own rather than return to the home of his mother (his parents having divorced in the '30s), and bounced between jobs before setting his sights on studying acting. Unable to pay for his education at the acting school for which he auditioned, he worked at the school as an office boy, intending to work his way through. After only three weeks, however, Newley was spotted by a movie director named Geoffrey de Barkus, who was in the process of preparing a film called The Adventures of Dusty Bates, and recruited the boy for the title role. Newley was scarcely a skilled actor, but he photographed extremely well and when playing roles that weren't too challenging, seemed natural. He also got better as he went along from role to role over the next few years. In 1948, he was cast in the best of his boyhood parts when David Lean chose Newley to play the Artful Dodger in his screen adaptation of Oliver Twist.

One of the most ambitious and controversial screen versions of a literary classic, Oliver Twist didn't open in America for three years, owing to distributors' objections to Sir Alec Guinness' portrayal of Fagin, but it was still a career maker for many in the cast. Newley was one of the best things in this brilliant film, with several great scenes and a superb performance in the film's denouement. Newley arrived as an actor just at the point when he was called up into the Army in 1949, but he was unable to adjust psychologically to the requirements of military service. On the recommendation of an Army psychiatrist, he was released in 1950. He picked up his screen career right where he left off with a string of well-made British films, including The Golden Salamander, Above Us the Waves, Cockleshell Heroes, and X the Unknown, running the gamut from wartime re-enactments to science fiction thrillers. During 1956, Newley joined the cast of an experimental four-person show called Cranks, written by John Cranko and John Addison, which was sufficiently popular enough in London to get transplanted to Broadway.

It was poorly received by New York critics, except for Newley, who played multiple roles and got an excellent notice from Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times. Newley was back in movies after the closing of Cranks, and one of his more unusual film appearances at the end of the '50s was in Idle on Parade. The British picture was loosely inspired by Elvis Presley having been drafted and was about a rock & roll singer named Jeep Jones, who is called up for military service. The film also yielded Newley's first chart-topping hit, "I've Waited So Long," ironically a rock & roll-style number. That single opened up a recording career for Newley, as well as a series of appearances as a singer on the music hall stage and on British television.

Between 1959 and 1961, Newley charted seven more Top Ten British hits in the pop/rock vein, including "Personality" and "Pop Goes the Weasel," and a pair of number one singles, "Why" and "Do You Mind." By 1961, he had two LPs out and seemed to be following the route of every other English rock & roll star (though, of course, he was older than any of his rivals in that field by nearly a decade), moving toward pop music on Love Is a Now and Then Thing and Tony. Newley's experience in Cranks, however, had whetted his appetite to do something new and serious in music and theater. His opportunity came in 1961 -- partly as an outgrowth of his chart success, which made Newley less of a risk in such a venture -- when he was invited to devise his own stage production.

He teamed up with an acquaintance, Leslie Bricusse, who brought Newley to New York (where Bricusse was already scheduled to work on a new show for Beatrice Lillie) and in a month-long burst of creative activity, they devised Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off. A mix of songs, dance, pantomime, and dialogue, it was a satirical look at the seven ages of man that became a huge hit on London's West End when it opened on July 21, 1961, starring and directed by Anthony Newley. It also yielded three hit songs, "What Kind of Fool Am I," " Once in a Lifetime," and "Gonna Build a Mountain." The show opened in New York 15 months later with Newley in the lead; it ended up running nearly two years, including a national tour for Newley. When he returned to England, he and Bricusse were one of the hottest songwriting teams in music, and among their subsequent hits was the title song to Goldfinger.

Newley and his second wife, Joan Collins, in collaboration with Bricusse, also wrote and recorded a hit musical comedy album, Fool Brittania, inspired by the Profumo scandal that had shaken the British government to its roots. Newley also starred in a film, The Small World of Sammy Lee, an expanded version of a theatrical work that he'd done on-stage in 1958. Several film projects for Newley as star and director (including a version of Stop the World that ended up directed by someone else) were announced during this period but never made. Instead, in 1965 he and Bricusse returned to the stage with The Roar of the Greasepaint -- The Smell of the Crowd. The British production, starring Norman Wisdom, was never successful, but the American production starring Newley himself, with Cyril Ritchard, enjoyed extended previews and a six-month run on Broadway. It yielded a successful cast album and several of the musical's songs were later covered by a wide range of pop artists. By that time, Newley announced that he had tired of musical theater and turned to other media, most notably film.

He was cast in and co-authored the score for the 1967 musical Doctor Doolittle, starring Rex Harrison, which was a notorious flop (nearly sinking Fox, the studio that produced it). Two years later, he directed and starred in the semi-autobiographical film Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, which became a failure of huge proportions. Then in 1971, he and Bricusse teamed up again to write the score for the musical Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was a box office success and yielded an early '70s pop standard in the guise of "The Candy Man," which was a hit single for Sammy Davis, Jr. That same year, Newley and Bricusse wrote songs for an NBC television version of Peter Pan. In 1972, Newley and Bricusse collaborated on one final stage work, The Good Old Bad Old Days, which was a modest success. Newley's career stalled from the mid-'70s on in terms of new triumphs.

He did films, including It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, but they made very little impression; the Sammy Davis, Jr. adaptation of Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off, filmed as Sammy Stops the World, was a failure as well. Newley's last new collection of material was the 1978 album The Singer and His Songs. He worked as an actor in small parts on projects such as the PBS production of Alice in Wonderland in 1982, but Newley was otherwise not very visible. By the '90s, he was in his sixties and one of the deans of English musical theater, moving into character roles and taking on new projects. A resident of California since the '70s, he returned to England as well, assembling a revue of his original music, called Once Upon a Song. He also played the title role in the Leslie Bricusse musical version of Scrooge, and occasionally returned to cabaret performance. Little-known to the outside world, Newley had contracted cancer, which he battled for years between and around these performing ventures.

He died of cancer at his home in Jensen Beach, FL, on April 14, 1999. In the time since his passing, Newley's music and especially his records from the '60s have acquired a new generation of listeners in England, and his albums are much sought after, following years of languishing in cut-out and bargain bins. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi Hear more of Anthony Newley | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Bruce Eder Anthony Newley was one of entertainment's genuine triple threats: an actor, singer, and composer with an international following, equally adept and prodigious in all three fields. Moreover, he enjoyed success as a performer in such seemingly mutually exclusive fields as rock & roll and the legitimate stage. And even more improbably, he did it with a working-class Cockney persona that should never have found much currency outside of England. Indeed, for 30 years he was one of the most imposing talents to come out of England this side of the Beatles . He was born Anthony George Newley on September 24, 1931, the son of George Anthony and Frances Grace Newley, in Hackney, a working-class section of London.

Neither of his parents was involved in performing or music, and it was only a sequence of events growing out of World War II that led him toward either of those fields. Newley's education was interrupted by the German blitz, and he was evacuated to a foster home in the countryside. Along with some friends, he eventually found his way to Brighton and the home of George Pescud, a retired music hall performer who introduced Newley to performing, singing with him in the local choir and performing skits. Pescud opened up Newley and his friends to a range of arts, including music, writing, and painting, that he might otherwise never have appreciated or understood. Newley, who was not yet 14 at the conclusion of the war, decided to remain on his own rather than return to the home of his mother (his parents having divorced in the '30s), and bounced between jobs before setting his sights on studying acting. Unable to pay for his education at the acting school for which he auditioned, he worked at the school as an office boy, intending to work his way through.

After only three weeks, however, Newley was spotted by a movie director named Geoffrey de Barkus, who was in the process of preparing a film called The Adventures of Dusty Bates, and recruited the boy for the title role. Newley was scarcely a skilled actor, but he photographed extremely well and when playing roles that weren't too challenging, seemed natural. He also got better as he went along from role to role over the next few years. In 1948, he was cast in the best of his boyhood parts when David Lean chose Newley to play the Artful Dodger in his screen adaptation of Oliver Twist. One of the most ambitious and controversial screen versions of a literary classic, Oliver Twist didn't open in America for three years, owing to distributors' objections to Sir Alec Guinness' portrayal of Fagin, but it was still a career maker for many in the cast. Newley was one of the best things in this brilliant film, with several great scenes and a superb performance in the film's denouement. Newley arrived as an actor just at the point when he was called up into the Army in 1949, but he was unable to adjust psychologically to the requirements of military service.

On the recommendation of an Army psychiatrist, he was released in 1950. He picked up his screen career right where he left off with a string of well-made British films, including The Golden Salamander, Above Us the Waves, Cockleshell Heroes, and X the Unknown, running the gamut from wartime re-enactments to science fiction thrillers. During 1956, Newley joined the cast of an experimental four-person show called Cranks, written by John Cranko and John Addison , which was sufficiently popular enough in London to get transplanted to Broadway. It was poorly received by New York critics, except for Newley, who played multiple roles and got an excellent notice from Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times. Newley was back in movies after the closing of Cranks, and one of his more unusual film appearances at the end of the '50s was in Idle on Parade. The British picture was loosely inspired by Elvis Presley having been drafted and was about a rock & roll singer named Jeep Jones, who is called up for military service. The film also yielded Newley's first chart-topping hit, "I've Waited So Long," ironically a rock & roll-style number.

That single opened up a recording career for Newley, as well as a series of appearances as a singer on the music hall stage and on British television. Between 1959 and 1961, Newley charted seven more Top Ten British hits in the pop/rock vein, including "Personality" and "Pop Goes the Weasel," and a pair of number one singles, "Why" and "Do You Mind." By 1961, he had two LPs out and seemed to be following the route of every other English rock & roll star (though, of course, he was older than any of his rivals in that field by nearly a decade), moving toward pop music on Love Is a Now and Then Thing and Tony. Newley's experience in Cranks, however, had whetted his appetite to do something new and serious in music and theater. His opportunity came in 1961 -- partly as an outgrowth of his chart success, which made Newley less of a risk in such a venture -- when he was invited to devise his own stage production.

He teamed up with an acquaintance, Leslie Bricusse , who brought Newley to New York (where Bricusse was already scheduled to work on a new show for Beatrice Lillie ) and in a month-long burst of creative activity, they devised Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off. A mix of songs, dance, pantomime, and dialogue, it was a satirical look at the seven ages of man that became a huge hit on London's West End when it opened on July 21, 1961, starring and directed by Anthony Newley . It also yielded three hit songs, "What Kind of Fool Am I," " Once in a Lifetime," and "Gonna Build a Mountain." The show opened in New York 15 months later with Newley in the lead; it ended up running nearly two years, including a national tour for Newley. When he returned to England, he and Bricusse were one of the hottest songwriting teams in music, and among their subsequent hits was the title song to Goldfinger.

Newley and his second wife, Joan Collins, in collaboration with Bricusse, also wrote and recorded a hit musical comedy album, Fool Brittania, inspired by the Profumo scandal that had shaken the British government to its roots. Newley also starred in a film, The Small World of Sammy Lee, an expanded version of a theatrical work that he'd done on-stage in 1958. Several film projects for Newley as star and director (including a version of Stop the World that ended up directed by someone else) were announced during this period but never made. Instead, in 1965 he and Bricusse returned to the stage with The Roar of the Greasepaint -- The Smell of the Crowd. The British production, starring Norman Wisdom , was never successful, but the American production starring Newley himself, with Cyril Ritchard , enjoyed extended previews and a six-month run on Broadway. It yielded a successful cast album and several of the musical's songs were later covered by a wide range of pop artists. By that time, Newley announced that he had tired of musical theater and turned to other media, most notably film.

He was cast in and co-authored the score for the 1967 musical Doctor Doolittle, starring Rex Harrison , which was a notorious flop (nearly sinking Fox, the studio that produced it). Two years later, he directed and starred in the semi-autobiographical film Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, which became a failure of huge proportions. Then in 1971, he and Bricusse teamed up again to write the score for the musical Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was a box office success and yielded an early '70s pop standard in the guise of "The Candy Man," which was a hit single for Sammy Davis, Jr. That same year, Newley and Bricusse wrote songs for an NBC television version of Peter Pan. In 1972, Newley and Bricusse collaborated on one final stage work, The Good Old Bad Old Days, which was a modest success. Newley's career stalled from the mid-'70s on in terms of new triumphs.

He did films, including It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, but they made very little impression; the Sammy Davis, Jr. adaptation of Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off, filmed as Sammy Stops the World, was a failure as well. Newley's last new collection of material was the 1978 album The Singer and His Songs. He worked as an actor in small parts on projects such as the PBS production of Alice in Wonderland in 1982, but Newley was otherwise not very visible. By the '90s, he was in his sixties and one of the deans of English musical theater, moving into character roles and taking on new projects. A resident of California since the '70s, he returned to England as well, assembling a revue of his original music, called Once Upon a Song. He also played the title role in the Leslie Bricusse musical version of Scrooge, and occasionally returned to cabaret performance. Little-known to the outside world, Newley had contracted cancer, which he battled for years between and around these performing ventures.

He died of cancer at his home in Jensen Beach, FL, on April 14, 1999. In the time since his passing, Newley's music and especially his records from the '60s have acquired a new generation of listeners in England, and his albums are much sought after, following years of languishing in cut-out and bargain bins. 1000+ images about ANTHONY NEWLEY on Pinterest | Giclee print, Oliver twist and Image search Anthony Newley Oliver Twist (1948).jpg (190×270) Save Anthony Newley Oliver Twist (1948).jpg (190×270) Save The Bands - Abba to Cliff The Bands - Abba to Cliff Click Here for Bands S - Z There were many great artists of the Sixties and Seventies. However, the big five - in terms of their domination of the charts - in alphabetical order were Abba, the Beatles, Cliff Richard, Elvis Presley and the Osmonds. Find out more about these and the other bands below. Abba This Abbafiles site features a collection of Abba and Abba related information.

Includes a discography of the band and the individual members, lyrics, pictures, books and links to other Abba sites. Abba emerged on the scene in 1974 with a number one Eurovision Song Contest hit "Waterloo" but the Swedish band took the charts by storm from 1976 to the end of the decade with a series of chart topping singles and top selling albums like "Arrival". Acker Bilk & Paramount Jazz Band Clarinetist Acker Bilk fronted the trad jazz-style Paramount Jazz Band to four top ten hits in the early Sixties. The biggest, "Stranger On the Shore", was a TV programme theme that never made the top spot but spent a year in the charts to become a UK million seller in the period 1961 - 62. Adam Faith Adam Faith, originally named Terry Nelhams, is described as a "musician, actor and businessman" by Mike Smith who has published this excellent website. His real impact on the British charts were in the years 1959 - 63. He had 5 top five hits in 1960, with "Poor Me" a number one.

However, he is also well remembered for his starring role in 70s TV series "Budgie". Alvin Stardust The rock revival of the early Seventies was good news for Alvin Stardust whose "Jealous Mind" was a number one in 1974 and who also had top ten hits with "Red Dress" and "You You You" that year. Alvin had re-invented himself as the arch rocker following an earlier pop career when, as Shane Fenton and the Fentones, he had a number of minor top thirty hits in 1961 - 62. In his new guise he scored a series of top ten hits from 1973 - 84. Andy Williams American Andy Williams has been at the top for over fifty years, starting as a member of family act, the Williams Brothers and then carving out a very successful solo career. His first chart entry in the UK was his only number one, in 1957. However, he captured the number one album spot in 1968 with "Love Andy"; in 1970 with "Andy Williams' Greatest Hits"; and in 1971 with "Home Loving Man".

Andy was ever-present during the Sixties and Seventies up until 1976, helped by a much-watched series of TV shows. Animals The Animals reached the UK top ten no less than eight times from 1964 - 67. Their first entry was with the classic "House of the Rising Sun", their only British number one - almost not released because it was 'too long' at over four minutes. They disbanded and re-formed around lead singer Eric Burdon in 1966, although Alan Price had already parted company in 1965. Anthony Newley Judy Harris has put together this fond memory of Newley who died in 1999. Anthony Newley, who had successive number one hits in 1960 with "Why" and "Do You Mind", enjoyed his golden period from 1959 - 61. He was originally a successful actor - a child star from 14 - who became a pop singer almost by accident. He had numerous film, stage and TV roles included the Artful Dodger in David Lean's 1948 film Oliver Twist.

Archies Biggest world-wide single of the year 1969 was "Sugar Sugar" from the Archies - very much a one hit wonder band but they were number one in the UK for 8 weeks. The characters came from an American cartoon and the lead singer on this enormously successful hit was Ron Dante. Art Garfunkel Following the break up of Simon & Garfunkel, Art Garfunkel concentrated on his acting and produced a series of albums. However, he managed the second biggest single of 1979 with "Bright Eyes", a million seller - he also enjoyed a number two album that year with "Fate For Breakfast". In 1975 he revived "I Only Have Eyes For You" - also a number one single. Bachelors The Irish vocal trio, the Bachelors, revived a series of hits from the Fifties and earlier to make the top ten eight times from 1963 - 66. Their only number one was "Diane", in 1964. That was their best year, with a further three top five hits at a time when - most weeks - they had two top twenty records.

Bay City Rollers Teenybopper stars the Bay City Rollers had their best years from 1974 - 77. They were the biggest act of 1975, thanks to three big singles "Bye Bye Baby" (the number two single of the year), "Give a Little Love", also a number one, and "Money Honey", a number three. The band also had a number one album in 1975 with "Once Upon a Star". Beach Boys After spending the early Sixties as an American phenomenon, the Beach Boys finally broke into the UK charts in 1966 with a trio of top three hits led by "Barbara Ann" then "Sloop John B" and "God Only Knows" before making number one with "Good Vibrations". Their LP, "Pet Sounds" was also a big success in 1966 and went on to be one of the most acclaimed albums of the decade. The Beach Boys fan club was started by Alice, the president, in 1973, when she wrote to rock magazines expressing an interest in seeing more articles about the band and it is the official Beach Boys fan organisation.

Beatles If you want just one Beatles site, then "I Am The Beatles" is the site to find everything about the band. 'All the albums, all the songs, all the lyrics, and what their songs really mean.' Their first big hit was in 1963. "Please Please Me" did not reach number one on all the UK charts but the follow up singles "From Me To You", "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" were huge hits. Sales of both "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" exceeded 1.5 million in the UK - the first time this level had ever been reached. Within another year "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had become the biggest ever selling global single by a British artist. Not only did the Beatles master the singles charts until April 1970 when the band broke up but their albums also dominated the LP charts through the Sixties. Bob Dylan This site is devoted to the songs, recordings and performances of Bob Dylan - a man who had a huge influence on the music and thinking of the Sixties. It includes the catalogue of officially released albums and songs. There is also a searchable database of Bob Dylan's published lyrics.

Dylan was always more of an album artist, enjoying a consistent run of top ten entries in the UK charts from 1964 - 83, including six number ones from 1965 - 70, the biggest of which was probably "John Wesley Harding" which topped the LP charts for three months in 1968. He also managed six top ten singles during the second half of the Sixties. Boney M Boney M were at their peak from 1977 - 79, launching their UK chart career with top three hits in 1977 with "Sunny" and "Ma Baker". In another year Boney M would be top performers but they had to settle for number two in 1978. Their big single was "Rivers of Babylon", biggest hit of the year and eventually selling just under two million copies in the UK alone. Later in the year they had a top two song with "Rasputin" followed by a massive Christmas hit with the classic "Mary's Boy Child" (another huge seller that eventually reached 1.8 million in the UK and second biggest hit of the year).

They also had a huge album hit with "Night Flight to Venus" in 1978. Anthony Newley — Listen for free on Spotify Anthony Newley Play on Spotify Anthony Newley was one of entertainment's genuine triple threats: an actor, singer, and composer with an international following, equally adept and prodigious in all three fields. Moreover, he enjoyed success as a performer in such seemingly mutually exclusive fields as rock & roll and the legitimate stage. And even more improbably, he did it with a working-class Cockney persona that should never have found much currency outside of England. Indeed, for 30 years he was one of the most imposing talents to come out of England this side of the Beatles . He was born Anthony George Newley on September 24, 1931, the son of George Anthony and Frances Grace Newley, in Hackney, a working-class section of London. Neither of his parents was involved in performing or music, and it was only a sequence of events growing out of World War II that led him toward either of those fields. Newley's education was interrupted by the German blitz, and he was evacuated to a foster home in the countryside.

Along with some friends, he eventually found his way to Brighton and the home of George Pescud, a retired music hall performer who introduced Newley to performing, singing with him in the local choir and performing skits. Pescud opened up Newley and his friends to a range of arts, including music, writing, and painting, that he might otherwise never have appreciated or understood. Newley, who was not yet 14 at the conclusion of the war, decided to remain on his own rather than return to the home of his mother (his parents having divorced in the '30s), and bounced between jobs before setting his sights on studying acting. Unable to pay for his education at the acting school for which he auditioned, he worked at the school as an office boy, intending to work his way through. After only three weeks, however, Newley was spotted by a movie director named Geoffrey de Barkus, who was in the process of preparing a film called The Adventures of Dusty Bates, and recruited the boy for the title role. Newley was scarcely a skilled actor, but he photographed extremely well and when playing roles that weren't too challenging, seemed natural.

He also got better as he went along from role to role over the next few years. In 1948, he was cast in the best of his boyhood parts when David Lean chose Newley to play the Artful Dodger in his screen adaptation of Oliver Twist. One of the most ambitious and controversial screen versions of a literary classic, Oliver Twist didn't open in America for three years, owing to distributors' objections to Sir Alec Guinness' portrayal of Fagin, but it was still a career maker for many in the cast. Newley was one of the best things in this brilliant film, with several great scenes and a superb performance in the film's denouement. Newley arrived as an actor just at the point when he was called up into the Army in 1949, but he was unable to adjust psychologically to the requirements of military service. On the recommendation of an Army psychiatrist, he was released in 1950. He picked up his screen career right where he left off with a string of well-made British films, including The Golden Salamander, Above Us the Waves, Cockleshell Heroes, and X the Unknown, running the gamut from wartime re-enactments to science fiction thrillers.

During 1956, Newley joined the cast of an experimental four-person show called Cranks, written by John Cranko and John Addison , which was sufficiently popular enough in London to get transplanted to Broadway. It was poorly received by New York critics, except for Newley, who played multiple roles and got an excellent notice from Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times. Newley was back in movies after the closing of Cranks, and one of his more unusual film appearances at the end of the '50s was in Idle on Parade. The British picture was loosely inspired by Elvis Presley having been drafted and was about a rock & roll singer named Jeep Jones, who is called up for military service. The film also yielded Newley's first chart-topping hit, "I've Waited So Long," ironically a rock & roll-style number. That single opened up a recording career for Newley, as well as a series of appearances as a singer on the music hall stage and on British television.

Between 1959 and 1961, Newley charted seven more Top Ten British hits in the pop/rock vein, including "Personality" and "Pop Goes the Weasel," and a pair of number one singles, "Why" and "Do You Mind." By 1961, he had two LPs out and seemed to be following the route of every other English rock & roll star (though, of course, he was older than any of his rivals in that field by nearly a decade), moving toward pop music on Love Is a Now and Then Thing and Tony. Newley's experience in Cranks, however, had whetted his appetite to do something new and serious in music and theater. His opportunity came in 1961 -- partly as an outgrowth of his chart success, which made Newley less of a risk in such a venture -- when he was invited to devise his own stage production.

He teamed up with an acquaintance, Leslie Bricusse, who brought Newley to New York (where Bricusse was already scheduled to work on a new show for Beatrice Lillie ) and in a month-long burst of creative activity, they devised Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off. A mix of songs, dance, pantomime, and dialogue, it was a satirical look at the seven ages of man that became a huge hit on London's West End when it opened on July 21, 1961, starring and directed by Anthony Newley. It also yielded three hit songs, "What Kind of Fool Am I," " Once in a Lifetime," and "Gonna Build a Mountain." The show opened in New York 15 months later with Newley in the lead; it ended up running nearly two years, including a national tour for Newley. When he returned to England, he and Bricusse were one of the hottest songwriting teams in music, and among their subsequent hits was the title song to Goldfinger.

Newley and his second wife, Joan Collins, in collaboration with Bricusse, also wrote and recorded a hit musical comedy album, Fool Brittania, inspired by the Profumo scandal that had shaken the British government to its roots. Newley also starred in a film, The Small World of Sammy Lee, an expanded version of a theatrical work that he'd done on-stage in 1958. Several film projects for Newley as star and director (including a version of Stop the World that ended up directed by someone else) were announced during this period but never made. Instead, in 1965 he and Bricusse returned to the stage with The Roar of the Greasepaint -- The Smell of the Crowd. The British production, starring Norman Wisdom , was never successful, but the American production starring Newley himself, with Cyril Ritchard, enjoyed extended previews and a six-month run on Broadway. It yielded a successful cast album and several of the musical's songs were later covered by a wide range of pop artists. By that time, Newley announced that he had tired of musical theater and turned to other media, most notably film.

He was cast in and co-authored the score for the 1967 musical Doctor Doolittle, starring Rex Harrison, which was a notorious flop (nearly sinking Fox, the studio that produced it). Two years later, he directed and starred in the semi-autobiographical film Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, which became a failure of huge proportions. Then in 1971, he and Bricusse teamed up again to write the score for the musical Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was a box office success and yielded an early '70s pop standard in the guise of "The Candy Man," which was a hit single for Sammy Davis, Jr. That same year, Newley and Bricusse wrote songs for an NBC television version of Peter Pan. In 1972, Newley and Bricusse collaborated on one final stage work, The Good Old Bad Old Days, which was a modest success. Newley's career stalled from the mid-'70s on in terms of new triumphs.

He did films, including It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, but they made very little impression; the Sammy Davis, Jr. adaptation of Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off, filmed as Sammy Stops the World, was a failure as well. Newley's last new collection of material was the 1978 album The Singer and His Songs. He worked as an actor in small parts on projects such as the PBS production of Alice in Wonderland in 1982, but Newley was otherwise not very visible. By the '90s, he was in his sixties and one of the deans of English musical theater, moving into character roles and taking on new projects. A resident of California since the '70s, he returned to England as well, assembling a revue of his original music, called Once Upon a Song. He also played the title role in the Leslie Bricusse musical version of Scrooge, and occasionally returned to cabaret performance. Little-known to the outside world, Newley had contracted cancer, which he battled for years between and around these performing ventures.

He died of cancer at his home in Jensen Beach, FL, on April 14, 1999. In the time since his passing, Newley's music and especially his records from the '60s have acquired a new generation of listeners in England, and his albums are much sought after, following years of languishing in cut-out and bargain bins. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi Read More Show less Anthony Newley on Apple Music To preview a song, mouse over the title and click Play. Open iTunes to buy and download music. Biography Anthony Newley was one of entertainment's genuine triple threats: an actor, singer, and composer with an international following, equally adept and prodigious in all three fields. Moreover, he enjoyed success as a performer in such seemingly mutually exclusive fields as rock & roll and the legitimate stage. And even more improbably, he did it with a working-class Cockney persona that should never have found much currency outside of England. Indeed, for 30 years he was one of the most imposing talents to come out of England this side of the Beatles.

He was born Anthony George Newley on September 24, 1931, the son of George Anthony and Frances Grace Newley, in Hackney, a working-class section of London. Neither of his parents was involved in performing or music, and it was only a sequence of events growing out of World War II that led him toward either of those fields. Newley's education was interrupted by the German blitz, and he was evacuated to a foster home in the countryside. Along with some friends, he eventually found his way to Brighton and the home of George Pescud, a retired music hall performer who introduced Newley to performing, singing with him in the local choir and performing skits. Pescud opened up Newley and his friends to a range of arts, including music, writing, and painting, that he might otherwise never have appreciated or understood. Newley, who was not yet 14 at the conclusion of the war, decided to remain on his own rather than return to the home of his mother (his parents having divorced in the '30s), and bounced between jobs before setting his sights on studying acting.

Unable to pay for his education at the acting school for which he auditioned, he worked at the school as an office boy, intending to work his way through. After only three weeks, however, Newley was spotted by a movie director named Geoffrey de Barkus, who was in the process of preparing a film called The Adventures of Dusty Bates, and recruited the boy for the title role. Newley was scarcely a skilled actor, but he photographed extremely well and when playing roles that weren't too challenging, seemed natural. He also got better as he went along from role to role over the next few years. In 1948, he was cast in the best of his boyhood parts when David Lean chose Newley to play the Artful Dodger in his screen adaptation of Oliver Twist. One of the most ambitious and controversial screen versions of a literary classic, Oliver Twist didn't open in America for three years, owing to distributors' objections to Sir Alec Guinness' portrayal of Fagin, but it was still a career maker for many in the cast. Newley was one of the best things in this brilliant film, with several great scenes and a superb performance in the film's denouement.

Newley arrived as an actor just at the point when he was called up into the Army in 1949, but he was unable to adjust psychologically to the requirements of military service. On the recommendation of an Army psychiatrist, he was released in 1950. He picked up his screen career right where he left off with a string of well-made British films, including The Golden Salamander, Above Us the Waves, Cockleshell Heroes, and X the Unknown, running the gamut from wartime re-enactments to science fiction thrillers. During 1956, Newley joined the cast of an experimental four-person show called Cranks, written by John Cranko and John Addison, which was sufficiently popular enough in London to get transplanted to Broadway. It was poorly received by New York critics, except for Newley, who played multiple roles and got an excellent notice from Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times. Newley was back in movies after the closing of Cranks, and one of his more unusual film appearances at the end of the '50s was in Idle on Parade.

The British picture was loosely inspired by Elvis Presley having been drafted and was about a rock & roll singer named Jeep Jones, who is called up for military service. The film also yielded Newley's first chart-topping hit, "I've Waited So Long," ironically a rock & roll-style number. That single opened up a recording career for Newley, as well as a series of appearances as a singer on the music hall stage and on British television. Between 1959 and 1961, Newley charted seven more Top Ten British hits in the pop/rock vein, including "Personality" and "Pop Goes the Weasel," and a pair of number one singles, "Why" and "Do You Mind." By 1961, he had two LPs out and seemed to be following the route of every other English rock & roll star (though, of course, he was older than any of his rivals in that field by nearly a decade), moving toward pop music on Love Is a Now and Then Thing and Tony. Newley's experience in Cranks, however, had whetted his appetite to do something new and serious in music and theater.

His opportunity came in 1961 -- partly as an outgrowth of his chart success, which made Newley less of a risk in such a venture -- when he was invited to devise his own stage production. He teamed up with an acquaintance, Leslie Bricusse, who brought Newley to New York (where Bricusse was already scheduled to work on a new show for Beatrice Lillie) and in a month-long burst of creative activity, they devised Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off. A mix of songs, dance, pantomime, and dialogue, it was a satirical look at the seven ages of man that became a huge hit on London's West End when it opened on July 21, 1961, starring and directed by Anthony Newley. It also yielded three hit songs, "What Kind of Fool Am I," " Once in a Lifetime," and "Gonna Build a Mountain." The show opened in New York 15 months later with Newley in the lead; it ended up running nearly two years, including a national tour for Newley.

When he returned to England, he and Bricusse were one of the hottest songwriting teams in music, and among their subsequent hits was the title song to Goldfinger. Newley and his second wife, Joan Collins, in collaboration with Bricusse, also wrote and recorded a hit musical comedy album, Fool Brittania, inspired by the Profumo scandal that had shaken the British government to its roots. Newley also starred in a film, The Small World of Sammy Lee, an expanded version of a theatrical work that he'd done on-stage in 1958. Several film projects for Newley as star and director (including a version of Stop the World that ended up directed by someone else) were announced during this period but never made. Instead, in 1965 he and Bricusse returned to the stage with The Roar of the Greasepaint -- The Smell of the Crowd. The British production, starring Norman Wisdom, was never successful, but the American production starring Newley himself, with Cyril Ritchard, enjoyed extended previews and a six-month run on Broadway. It yielded a successful cast album and several of the musical's songs were later covered by a wide range of pop artists.

By that time, Newley announced that he had tired of musical theater and turned to other media, most notably film. He was cast in and co-authored the score for the 1967 musical Doctor Doolittle, starring Rex Harrison, which was a notorious flop (nearly sinking Fox, the studio that produced it). Two years later, he directed and starred in the semi-autobiographical film Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, which became a failure of huge proportions. Then in 1971, he and Bricusse teamed up again to write the score for the musical Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was a box office success and yielded an early '70s pop standard in the guise of "The Candy Man," which was a hit single for Sammy Davis, Jr. That same year, Newley and Bricusse wrote songs for an NBC television version of Peter Pan. In 1972, Newley and Bricusse collaborated on one final stage work, The Good Old Bad Old Days, which was a modest success. Newley's career stalled from the mid-'70s on in terms of new triumphs.

He did films, including It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, but they made very little impression; the Sammy Davis, Jr. adaptation of Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off, filmed as Sammy Stops the World, was a failure as well. Newley's last new collection of material was the 1978 album The Singer and His Songs. He worked as an actor in small parts on projects such as the PBS production of Alice in Wonderland in 1982, but Newley was otherwise not very visible. By the '90s, he was in his sixties and one of the deans of English musical theater, moving into character roles and taking on new projects. A resident of California since the '70s, he returned to England as well, assembling a revue of his original music, called Once Upon a Song. He also played the title role in the Leslie Bricusse musical version of Scrooge, and occasionally returned to cabaret performance. Little-known to the outside world, Newley had contracted cancer, which he battled for years between and around these performing ventures.

He died of cancer at his home in Jensen Beach, FL, on April 14, 1999. In the time since his passing, Newley's music and especially his records from the '60s have acquired a new generation of listeners in England, and his albums are much sought after, following years of languishing in cut-out and bargain bins. ~ Bruce Eder Top Albums

Question: He was a 60s chart topper but who was it that played 'The Artful Dodger in the 1948 film 'Oliver Twist'?
Answer: Anthony Newley